The two firms said the development will allow Apogee users to take advantage of hybrid offset/digital workflows and enable joint customers to save time and increase digital printing productivity and profits.
Agfa Graphics workflow solutions marketing manager Erik Peeters said: “The main benefit of the integration is having a single point of entry, so having one pre-press department that manipulates and verifies the data as it comes in and then distributes the workload to the appropriate devices.
“Both EFI and Agfa keep on improving the whole connectivity of the setup. EFI have an Apogee system at all times and when we have a new release coming out we provide it to them in advance so they can do the validation.
“We also have an EFI Fiery installed here to do the validation of the connection when things move on so there is a very good communication line between the two companies when it comes to the integration.”
Apogee 10, which was launched in the UK at the end of June, has a new user interface for unbound work that aims to enable printers to make optimum use of press sheets.
It is also able to split parts of a job and send those for digital output, which is said to be useful when versioning jobs and for proofing books with high page counts.
The Apogee/Fiery integration will allow users to access the capabilities of EFI’s latest Fiery DFE platform - Fiery FS200 Pro - from the Apogee interface.
In integrated hybrid workflows, Fiery DFEs report job status data directly to Apogee so both prepress and production operators can monitor job status in real time.
Users of both products will now be able to leverage EFI Fiery colour management technology from one consolidated point of control with colour profiles and rendering intent managed by Apogee. Users of Apogee can also now map parameters for inline finishing on Fiery driven digital presses.
“Within Agfa’s large Apogee installed base, there are also a large number of Fiery Driven digital presses from all of the leading digital press manufacturers,” said EFI Fiery senior vice-president and general manager Toby Weiss.
“This integration will enable those organisations to streamline their workflow even more, taking time and touches out of the process for a more cost-efficient operation.”
